Investing In Change: Why Venture Capital Firms Insist on Change Management

Thousands of private equity-backed companies have chosen NetSuite. The NetSuite Private Equity Services Practice has experience spanning all types of business, across every major industry. What often goes unmentioned is that each of these companies insists that change management be part of their implementations. 

Change Management services allow firms to maximize their user adoption as the better-prepared end users are for a change the more swiftly will embrace it. This creates not only an opportunity for a successful adoption of NetSuite but also the development of a positive change culture, which can have lasting effects on the organization for years to come. As many of these firms work through M&A, divestitures, and IPOs, venture capital firms choose to partner with NetSuite and in doing so engage in change management because it offers them:

1. Risk Reduction

2. Best in Market Offerings

3. Comprehensive Employee Engagement

4. Flexibility & Reliability Within Solutions

Risk Reduction

Venture capital is a business based on risk. The firms that are most successful know how to manage this and use all available tools to reduce that risk as they make investment decisions.  NetSuite understands that the pace of change in business is unprecedented and that private equity firms and their portfolio companies must operate at the speed of modern business. This makes change management a must on all NetSuite implementations to ensure user adoption of the investment.  

Change Management involves understanding and controlling these risks so that downtime is limited and users can be engaged at the time of go-live.  The NetSuite teams are experts in mitigating risk. Our offering allows us to assess the potential risk impacts and coordinate the change to minimize any interference to the business. 

Any project will provide challenges, but by engaging the NetSuite change management experts, venture capital firms know that they can assess these impacts and make decisions before they happen.  Change Management allows the team to understand the customer and therefore reduce implementation risks by engaging the end users, project team, and executive sponsors to deliver change effectively. 

Best In Market Solutions

When venture capital firms turn to NetSuite, they are looking for a partner with expertise, whose offerings are market leaders. NetSuite’s market differentiators are a key component that allows us to drive value and in turn drive engagement from end users. 

1. NetSuite has a cloud change solution. As private equity firms look for cloud-based solutions, they need change management built around the cloud to support it. NetSuite offers one of the only change solutions that is built for cloud-based technology. In a fast-paced cloud implementation change initiatives differ from those designed for on-premise implementations and this alignment is key to the success of the change. 

2. Designed For NetSuite – Private equity firms do not have the time to bring outside vendors up to speed on the NetSuite offering, so they look to NetSuite for a change program designed specifically around our company offerings. Many generic change programs can be applied to everything under the sun, but a targeted offering designed around the best practices to support a successful NetSuite adoption allows for the maximum return on investment for private equity firms.

3. Unique Offerings – NetSuite offers change solutions that you will not find anywhere else in the industry. The unique set of tools allows organizations to achieve implementation goals faster, by assessing program impacts and using that information to structure sustained user adoption. Any job is easy if you have the right tools and NetSuite’s change management offering provides those tools for private equity. 

4. Sustained Change Focus – The investment in NetSuite is not just about getting the system live, but about sustaining the change for years to come.  With reinforcement and development offerings along with a strong ongoing support strategy, NetSuite allows private equity firms to create a positive change culture in their organizations, where employees are advocates for the process and drive continuous engagement for years to come. 

Comprehensive Engagement

In addition to standard tools for change management, NetSuite has a unique set of disruptor tools. These tools provide a comprehensive approach to change, allowing the team to view the larger landscape of the organization and the project. This complete picture is especially important for private equity firms as it drives a unique advantage in defining the scope and depth of the change services needed.

• Change Success Forecast – This dashboard monitors the progress of change initiatives, highlighting success milestones, and bringing to light areas that may require additional focus. This reporting tool helps the project and leadership teams to know how their employees are moving through the change process.  

• On-going Support Strategy – This tool allows us to assess the current support options – both technical and functional - for use after going live. By developing recommendations for a robust support structure based on industry best practices, we can assist in the implementation of recommendations before going live so that end users are ready to succeed. 

• Sustainability & Quality Assessment – By assessing the rate of utilization after going live, we can determine the quality of user adoption and create additional mitigation strategies. This highlights any potential barriers to successful system utilization and provides recommendations on required areas of focus as well as determines strategies for continued management support. 

Flexibility & Reliability

Investments are made in companies of all shapes and sizes.  Venture capital firms need a partner that they can rely on to support them across any of these engagements. The NetSuite change management team has developed a practice with flexibility. It can be engaged across any length of time or size of company. NetSuite’s ability to work with a range of small businesses & startups to Fortune 100 companies allows them to provide a solution that will work to meet the needs of any private equity firm as they evaluate and define their organizations’ success strategy. 

This level of understanding across business sizes and industries brings a level of reliability to the NetSuite change offering that private equity firms rely on.  They have shown time and time again that they can be successful and help drive change across these organizations by partnering with NetSuite on their initiatives. 

Venture capital firms are in the business of helping businesses succeed. To do this it is no surprise that they turn to NetSuite and engage our change management offerings to support them. With a comprehensive change solution, NetSuite offers a level of partnership that allows them to trust the success of these businesses to our platform and change management teams.